


Calling Things by their Names: An Aubreyad CurtainFic

by feroxargentea



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-17
Updated: 2010-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 10:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Aubreyad CurtainFic<br/>In which Stephen is confused, Jack is amused, and Fanny accidentally knits a condom</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calling Things by their Names: An Aubreyad CurtainFic

It had been a long day, the last of a long week wooding and watering, and when the anchors were finally weighed and the long voyage across the southern Pacific resumed, the Surprises had been subdued, and Jack with them. He propped both legs up on the locker and sat back with a sigh, letting his charts and calculations fall to the deck.

Stephen, already sprawled on the other end of the locker beneath the Great Cabin’s curved windows, pressed his crooked bony toes against Jack’s thigh and felt the grateful warmth creep through the old fracture lines. His day, too, had been long, and not as productive as it ought to have been. Much of the island, though carefully mapped by Jack and Spotted Dick, remained unknown to natural philosophy, Stephen having been detained for some time by the discovery of a dwarfish nondescript coleopteran, its iridescent elytra longitudinally striated with heavy sclerotisation, within the nest of a small ground-rail. Parasitical? Could it be so, when his hand-lens had confirmed the presence of all the usual parasites in the nest – fleas, feather-mites – or perhaps it was necrophagous, awaiting the inevitable death of superfluous chicks?

He glanced up from his Lamarck and gestured at the charts scattered across the black and white chequer of the deck.

“Killick will scold, my dear.”

Jack smiled without opening his eyes. “Killick will scold in any case.” He chafed Stephen’s feet absently, thinking about his friend’s Christmas gifts concealed in his sea-chest: a pair of woollen stockings expertly knitted by Sophie and a pair painstakingly mangled by the twins, one of which might make a serviceable if somewhat overly capacious nightcap, the other too shrivelled and meagre to fit any body part - any mentionable body part, that was. It would not do to suggest as much to the notoriously practical Doctor, however.

“Jack, tell me now, will you, was there anything especially feminine about our dinner this afternoon?”

“I fear I do not quite follow you.”

“Steak and kidney pudding followed by jam roly-poly with custard, the due masculine allotment of flesh and suet, the accustomed company of male companions and servants; I did not perceive in what particular the entertainment might be said to be of a womanly nature. Is it possible, brother, that I might have been practised upon – gammoned – made game of in the nautical fashion to which those not born to the service become a victim?”

“Why, Stephen, I cannot think that the Surprises would practise upon a confirmed seaman, you know.”

“Killick distinctly told me this morning that I must return immediately on seeing the Blue Peter, as there was a nice piece of skirt for dinner.”

Jack gaped for a moment, his sunburnt cheeks turning a shade pinker before his countenance dissolved into mirth, helpless streaming breathless laughter dancing in his sky-blue eyes.

Stephen waited with long-schooled patience.

“Skirt, beef skirt,” Jack gasped, when he could speak again. “The part between the animal’s chest and belly, the sheet or curtain as you might say. The last bullock was butchered yesterday.”

“Skirt, sheet, curtain forsooth. The diaphragmatic muscle, I perceive. May we not call things by their right names, for all love?”

“Bless you, Stephen, the wardroom might not care for diaphragmatic pudding. And you are such a one for languages, you know, that I sometimes forget you ain’t the expert in His Majesty’s English.”

Stephen pressed his ankles more closely against Jack’s leg, the pain of the old injuries subsiding into a dull ache and his irritation receding with it. “Never in life, my dear.” He laid the Lamarck on the Object’s nearest shelf and propped his spectacles on top, rubbing ruefully at the knuckles of his pallid fingers.

“It will be warmer in the sleeping-cabin.” Jack twitched the hem of Stephen’s nightgown, his eyes glinting in the last light of the southern winter’s sunset. He stood up, rubbing his aching spine with one hand and holding out the other to help Stephen to his feet. “In or out of a skirt.”

Stephen scowled affectionately at Jack’s back, let out a deep sigh, and followed him, as ever, into the sleeping-cabin.


End file.
